


Hope's Reach

by threewalls



Series: Schirra [29]
Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: 706 OV, Alternate Character Interpretation, M/M, Prayer, Shiva - Freeform, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-10
Updated: 2007-05-10
Packaged: 2017-10-15 02:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><cite>The good all died at Nalbina.</cite></p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope's Reach

Vossler kneels with head bent, even after Basch's retreating footfalls fade utterly into the mechanical hum of the ship. Winded, heavily bruised without and within, he has been scratched well, though not with mortal wounding. With this luck, the cut to his calves may prove torture but not crippling. He does not know where Nightmare fell, but he could not have lifted even a shortsword now, to make his death quick, or good. The good all died at Nalbina. He waits instead for the Archadians, of whom he expects no misplaced stay of execution.

The ship shudders beneath him, a movement in the metal that travels through the floor, through his armour. He raises his head.

They are in Jagd. Who could be attacking them? Pirates are reckless, but what profit could there be in engaging an armada? Another avion, he wonders, or the tomb itself--

Above him, the ceiling is eaten by fire.

Holy Mother of all.

He attempts to stand; he falls. Acrid smoke makes his eyes burn. He crawls, scrambling like an animal. The gangway-- ships, a docking bay must have ships-- is further than he remembers. His vision returns, spotted with fading lights. Splinters of debris rain from above.

Suddenly, he is weightless, his gorge rising with it, and at the next, flat against the deck.

Shiva groans, and the deck tilts from under him. He rolls over and again, floor striking his elbow, knee, face. Elsewhere nearby, metal scrapes against metal, impacts more meatily than with clatter. Thinking of their height, he reaches out for the railing, the edge, anything to halt his slide-- and lands, metal wall striking flat along his side.

He pushes himself to sitting, what was floor against his back. The bulkhead does not release.

Something falls on him; someone (gods, not him?) screams. He cannot move his legs. It's too heavy, too much, blood-stench and blunt metal. He almost forgets to how to breathe, but--

His hands are not pinned, he can see them, though they hardly feel like his own. It's just a corpse, one of the rabid viera's victims, dressed in full-plate; he simply needs leverage.

In a pouch at the belt, he finds a pebble that is not a pebble and two potions, their thick blue glass miraculously intact. He drinks one, his beard sticky where it spills and feels pain returning to his legs, his feet. His palms are sticky, too, dark, cut. He tries the corpse again, heaves it aside, though the movement strips his vision of colour.

His mind races for the stone's nature, pale, rough to the touch, light for its bulk: float. He speaks the words as he remembers them, feather-soft magick washing him light-headed.

The spell lifts him off the deck, but does nothing for his wounds. He drops the remaining potion in his own carry-pouch. Either there will be time enough for that, later, or there will not. With no honour, no fealty-- no duty, for if anyone could, if it is at all possible, Basch will keep her alive-- it should be enough for him to hope to die. It isn't.

His fate is for the gods now, if there are gods. Finally allowing his heavy eyes to close, Vossler begins to pray.

**Author's Note:**

> Why doesn't Vossler just blow up in this?
> 
> One's party are transferred some distance from the Leviathan (and Ghis) to the Shiva before fighting Vossler. When the Dawn Shard begins to implode Leviathan, the alarm raised about power draining the ship can be seen active in the engine room and in the command deck where Ghis is, but not where Vossler and our party are, not on Shiva.
> 
> Not all the fleet appears to explode alongside Leviathan-- at least one ship, which resembles Shiva, can be seen falling from the sky, almost intact but with smoke streaming from it.


End file.
